Entertainment

eHarmony Rolls Out Cleaner, Magazine-Style Redesign

For the first time in about a decade, online dating site eHarmony is rolling out some pretty major design changes and improvements to the user experience.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based eHarmony, which launched in the U.S. in 2000, is trying to unify its look, refresh the user experience and stand out in a sea of online dating competitors, like Match.com and OkCupid.

Every aspect of the user experience is now different — from creating your profile page, to reviewing your matches. The new responsive design ensures it works well even on the iPad.

New Magazine-Like Profile

Though eHarmony has been gradually unveiling its new, magazine-like profile page to some users since last summer (including new users and beta testers), all existing U.S. users will be automatically switched over in the coming weeks.

The company's Vice President of product management, Arvind Mishra, told Mashable the new profile design cohesively shares details about a person like a story, in contrast to the old profile page, which had multiple box modules.

The profile page change is a stark difference from eHarmony's old design, and it looks similar to About.me pages. Even editing the new profile is more intuitive as you can make changes right on your page and immediately see how it looks.

Old Profile:

New Profile:

These changes on profile pages carry over to eHarmony's overall redesign, which focuses on visuals and readability, according to Mishra. He said users won't even see things like third-party ads on the site anymore.

"This is the first time where we kind of took all the good things that we built over the last 10 years and really re-examined like what we wanted the user experience to be like," Mishra said.

Revamped Relationship Questionnaire

Since mid-December, new users have seen the site's new "Relationship Questionnaire," which helps the service find the right matches between people.

Mishra said the old questionnaire format was "scary looking" and "like a tax form." The new design (pictured below) keeps it to one question per page. So, from a user standpoint, you might feel like you're actually moving through the process.

The Book of You

Users will see the latest site enhancement on Wednesday. eHarmony's personality profile, which gives users insights about themselves, will become more visual with a feature called "The Book of You."

"Our thought is that in order to be ready for that amazing relationship or that amazing person, you really should understand yourself and how people perceive you," Mishra said.

Note that the first several sections of "The Book of You" are free, while users need a premium subscription to access the rest.

Other Enhancements

eHarmony's user dashboard will also be revamped with more visually interesting content.

Old Dashboard:

New Dashboard:

With the eHarmony redesign, Mishra said they wanted to focus on empowering the user, making sure visual hierarchy matched what the user was looking for and ensuring the site was human and emotional.

"Our original site was incredibly scientific and incredibly sterile."

Mishra added that a feeling like that is the scariest type of thing someone can encounter when they're in a "fragile state" (e.g. newly divorced).

eHarmony also wants to make it clear that through this user experience, its site's focus is on lasting relationships — not hookups or a "hot or not" type site. The company claims that 565,000 marriages in the United States are the result of eHarmony.com.

Mishra told Mashable there's always hesitation whenever a company like eHarmony changes something that's been out there for so long.

"That's always a fear whenever you change something, especially something that's been out there for 10 years, that you're going to break something. But in this case, people are responding pretty well to it," he said.

eHarmony said the redesign was accelerated when its founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, returned last summer as CEO, ushering in a restructure.

What do you think of eHarmony's new design? Does the user experience matter to you? Let us know in the comments.

Mashable
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